My name is Daniele Cini, I’m seventeen years old; I live in Venice since I was born and I’m now attending the fourth class of the Scientific high school G.B.Benedetti. The Moonbuggy project was proposed to us by Ralf Heckel, chairman of the International Space Education Institute (ISEI) in November, while he was in Venice, and immediately interested the whole class; after some “SKYPE meetings”(the last one on Christmas’ Eve) with the help of Ralf himself and the interpreter Arianna Martin we were able to begin our adventure. On January we booked the flight tickets, and on February the 5th we were flying to Leipzig. The experience was immediately dynamic: the first day (Monday) we visited BMW factory and Leipzig’s Handwerkskammer, Tuesday we travelled to Anhalt-Saxony to see the Nebra’s disc museum, the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial, Korolev’s house……. And in the next few days more other things. After all, in the second part of the week, we analyzed and translated the Great Moonbuggy Race’s rules and we learnt how to use some kind of press machines; and, finally, on Saturday we drove for the first time a real Moonbuggy in Leipzig’s fair!!!

Come back home we were informed that the experience may continued if we were interested: an indian team was inable to participate unless it formed an “International Team”; we caught immediately this occasion! Obviously the class had to choose who would have the luck to live this educative adventure, taking into account school profit and capacities: at the end we were chosen in five. We prepared an application video on February the 20th and we sent it to NASA the next day: it was a success! Ralf made the possible he could to add us to the Indian team and finally NASA said yes!!! We began immediately to do the things we were told to do: we booked the flight for Huntsville, AL on March the 1st and we contacted all the companies or agency we could that may be interested in sponsoring our project; moreover we contacted CNR (National Research Center) turnery to build the pieces we needed. Time was against us (we had got only one month) so things getting hard day by day, and this challenge made us aware of the difficulties of this type of activity. Ralf was very solicitous and prompt, so that every question was quickly answered (we also organized a little SKYPE meeting on March the 15th). Our project interested also local press, so that from the 20th we started to appear in newspapers as “il corriere del Veneto” and “la Nuova di Venezia Mestre”; we also find a pair of important sponsor at the end of the month, so that our travel to America is beginning even better than we expected!!!